CID team to set out for North Bengal to quiz CMOHs of three districts

A team comprising senior officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) will be interrogating the Chief Medical Officer Health (CMOH) of three districts in North Bengal in connection with the fake doctor row.

The three districts whose CMOHs will be interrogated are Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and North Dinajpur.

The team will leave Kolkata soon for North Bengal and they will be questioning the doctors in the beginning of the next week.

It may be recalled that the first two fake doctors in the state were arrested from Dinajpur and further investigation had revealed that the arrest of those two doctors are nothing but tips of icebergs. Subsequently, the CID had arrested fake doctors from South Bengal as well following investigation on the basis of the complaint lodged by the West Bengal Medical Council with Bidhannagar police station.

Sources said that the CID officers will be asking the CMOHs that how the fake doctors had managed to work in government-run health establishments despite having fake certificates.

This comes at a time when CID has already identified around 60 fake doctors who are practicing in various private hospitals without valid registration numbers.

The investigating agency which has been conducting a probe in connection with this incident might arrest the accused doctors before filing a charge-sheet against them. On the basis of the investigation, the CID officers have prepared a list of suspected fake doctors most of whom are from various private hospitals in the city and districts. These 60 doctors are practicing at various private hospitals in the city and chambers without proper registration numbers.

The CID officers from time to time submitted the list of suspected fake doctors to the West Bengal Medical Council to verify if they had any valid registration number from the Medical Council of India. During the probe, the investigating officers came to know about the whereabouts of many such fake doctors, while many others are still under scanner.

Meanwhile, North 24-Parganas' district police on Saturday have arrested one fake doctor who was illegally practicing in two of his chambers in Habra and Gobardanga area in North 24 Parganas for years. In view of a number of fake doctors being detected almost every day, the local residents suspected that the accused Soumen Debnath who was using top degrees might not be a registered doctor and they wanted to see his certificates but he allegedly failed to produce any certificate.

The local people alleged that the accused has been using the degrees like MD and FRCS on his writing pad but he failed to produce any supporting documents. The local residents found discrepancies in his statement when they confronted him.

The local people then informed the matter to the police who in turn reached the spot and arrested the accused. During the investigation, police came to know that the accused used to run a pharmacy using another doctor's registration number. The police have started a detailed probe in this regard.